Bath continued to expand his limbs out into the tortus, whipping them fast enough to liquefy the creature's flesh on impact. After the first five seconds of pure destructive fury, Bath began to get...creative.

It's difficult to wreck this tortus from the inside, he observed, I don't have knowledge of it's genetics...I haven't devoured it yet. No biological precursors to go off of, either. Even so, Bath had no reservations spontaneously generating the most fiendish toxins and bacteria that he could imagine.

Acid spray explosions, he hissed in contentment. Spread the lesions with ten paralyzing agents; one should work, at least, he speculated. He concurrently added in batches of miscellaneous bacteria to the mix, hoping that at least one variety would quickly take root and multiply.

As Bath moved forward, he plugged the empty space behind him with gnarled dragonleaf wood, growing the fronds out into bark as tough as steel. An outsider observer equipped with echolocation would likely balk at the absurdity of the scene: a giant tentacle/needle blob was shooting through an endless mass of flesh that resembled the insides of clams or mussels. Wherever it went, pops sounded as the fleshy environment exploded and seemed to gush a watery liquid; this, in turn, melted the flesh. In a blink, before the disintegration of flesh could be fully observed, innumerable ash-green branches expanded out from behind and plugged the area.

The result of Bath's rampage was that the tortus' flesh was rapidly torn to shreds, its healing obstructed by the addition of woody dragonleaf. After a minute of moving through the tortus, Bath narrowed down on a potent toxin combination that paralyzed flesh and caused rapid and expanding necrosis. Now, when the pops of his explosions occurred, the flesh in the surrounding area carried paralyzing/necrotic toxins outward.

The modified dragonleaf, imbued with the basic understanding that it should expand out, feed upon, and displace dead or dying flesh, expanded at an even faster pace due to the new necrotic toxin. Because this variant of dragonleaf incorporated the flesh of the tortus into the matrix of its cells, the tortus' flesh inadvertently was unable to receive any kind of restorative assistance from surrounding flesh: the dragonleaf effectively turned everything it touched into irreparable scar tissue, so that disconnected and dying flesh couldn't be reattached and incorporated into the main body.

---

"I wish he would've waited a second before leaving," Lisa sighed. "I would've been able to point him in the direction of the tortus' 'brain,' so to speak."

"Kursi abilities? Like how you found Bath?" Dean asked.

"Yeah; I finished sweeping the area around us, and I think I've picked up on the tortus' shell."

"What's the shell like?" Dean asked, recalling that Lisa's kursi ability visualized shells in different colors based on a number of factors. "You said on the way that Bath's is like a black shadow."

"It's mustard yellow," Lisa replied carefully, "with little crawly things radiating out of it. It's pretty weird, considering that most humans have shells that look like auroras."

"What kind of shell does Virigard have?" Dean asked, looking at the jerboa.

"All of the quasies have auroras, like humans," Lisa replied. "It's probably because Bath used human intelligence as the model for all quasi species."

"What about verdora? Or the things on Lime World you apparently forced into making everyone data chips? Dean queried, chuckling as he recalled Lisa's explanation of that scheme just a few minutes ago.

So far, they'd been trapped for fifteen minutes; within that time, Dean had asked a plethora of questions, surprising Lisa: she'd thought him more of a...quiet type, introverted. I guess once he gets going with a line of questioning, he doesn't stop.

"Wait," she said, holding up a hand, ignoring Dean's latest question. "I think he's found it. The center of the tortus' shell. He's approaching it now..." Lisa recounted Bath's current movements in real time, reminding Dean of a radio sports announcer. "His movement is sluggish, jerky, like the tortus is pushing him back with walls of new flesh. I can't tell what he's doing, but his speed is steadily increasing...now, instead of being knocked back, he's making steady progress forward, He's begun to approach the center in a helical pattern...interesting..."

Suddenly, the world cracked around them, the flesh under the craft emitting the very un-flesh-like sound. "Shit, it's healing itself," Lisa murmured, shaking her head. "But it isn't working; Bath is getting even closer, circling in faster--"

Her real-time report was interrupted by the collapse of the floor beneath the craft, sending the trio dropping down.

---

This is it, Bath slavered, his many millions of mouths ripping into nearby flesh like mini tornados. As they did so, they slathered the toxic, bacteria-filled poison in the wounds they left behind They really were tiny, each the size of a human mouth, though outfitted with fangs serrated and bent like those of a tiger shark.

Fangs with the sole evolutionary purpose of ripping rotating to bore into flesh were monstrously effective against the soft tissue of the tortus. In fact, the flesh near the tortus' center was the fleshiest of all.

Good thing, too, or else I might have never found the tortus' brain. After a few minutes, Bath realized that while slight, the softness of flesh varied on a gradient, with the slightly harder flesh closer to the border of the rubbery second layer.

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Now that he was as close to the so-called brain as he was, however, he no longer needed to use this gradient to find his way. No: he relied on smell and taste. The mineral concentration of the bizarre, somewhat decentralized neural network of the tortus set it apart from the rest of its fleshy layer. By following the concentrations of these minerals to where they were most potent, Bath felt confident he could identify and swallow the neural tissue to shut down the tortus' primitive mind.

---

Shit, shit, shit, Lisa thought, panting with the shock of the craft's plummet. "The tortus' body is shrinking," she snapped, righting herself in her seat.

"How do you know?" Dean asked, tense, jittery, his eyes watching the screen for signs that the area around them would collapse again.

"People above," Lisa explained, "their shells are falling downward. Not by a lot, yet."

"Wait, people are falling? Like, into cracks in the earth?" Dean glanced at Virigard. Have the jerboa tunnels collapsed?

"No; think of it like...the mountain rests on a tower of Jenga bricks. Right now, a whole layer of Jenga bricks was removed at once."

"So the base of the mountain's sunk in?" Dean asked, confused by the analogy.

"Ugh, it's hard to tell exactly," Lisa groaned. "I'm trying to make sense of thousands of pinpoints above," she explained. She estimated that at least a hundred thousand sapients fell within her current range as she swept her shell back and forth. "All I sense is that 70% of all shells fell down several feet, and stayed down. Considering what's happening down here, my only conclusion is that the foundation of the mountain is starting to collapse."

"What about the others?" Virigard asked.

"Not sure," Lisa replied. "Could be anything; maybe they're using dragonleaf to keep themselves in place? Maybe I'm just picking up that everyone was in their residential buildings and, in the wake of small earth tremors, they all decided to evacuate."

"...Or, maybe they're just moving down the mountain," Dean said at last, raising an eyebrow. "How can you tell that--"

"People don't all just teleport ten feet down at the same time," Lisa argued dismissively. "This is also why I don't think people are simply leaving their living quarters. This...it isn't a result of natural human migration."

"Well, um, what are we going to do about this?" Dean asked, his dark skin melding into the murky low-light mode of the craft.

"Nothing," Lisa sighed, crossing her arms. "We're stuck, like I said before."

"But what if--"

"I told Bath about the tortus."

Dean tsked. "Do you really think he was paying attention?"

Lisa smiled, her expression suddenly filled with amusement, though she didn't respond. Dean groaned and dropped the conversation, waiting for his former roommate to kill the tortus and rescue them from its corpse.

This is my life now, Dean thought incredulously. And I really didn't think it could get any weirder. "Lisa?" he asked, "Why does COTD have Path Points?"

"Hmm? Path Points?" That's kinda random, she thought.

"Yeah; why do people make Path Points?"

"Oh, you mean, why bother with a form of currency?" Lisa asked, catching on. "Ugh, it wasn't my idea. Bath, Lepochim, Nevis, and even the leader of the devilbats, Olm, argued for such a system." She sighed, recalling the "argument."

"Wait, you guys sit down and decide that kind of stuff?" Dean asked, curious and somewhat annoyed other humans had no say in the process.

"Not really," Lisa said, shifting her position. "It's more like...I--every week I suggest a plan of action. Nevis makes some changes to it, then sends it off to get implemented. But this time, somehow Lepochim of all people got access to it."

"...And?"

"Once Lepochim had it, he told Olm, the devilbat leader, and his own personal mount," she snorted. "The two of them expressed their displeasure over my plan to Nevis, who said she'd look into their concerns."

"...And?"

Lisa gave him a disparaging look. "And, she said they made good points. The main concern was that, without a form of currency, sapient civilization would be impossible."

Dean cocked his head, considering this point. "Well, what did the encyclopedia say? Have there been any successful instances?"

Lisa sighed. "That's where they got me: every civilization of over twenty million sapients failed at implementing a system without currency."

"So, um, all of them," Dean added, mouth upturning slightly into a smile. "Did you know about this before making your original plan?"

"Yeah, I knew; it's the first bit of information that shows up when you search 'Communism.' Which, by the way, has naturally and independently come into being on thousands of other planets."

"Then why...?" Actually, I still don't even know what her original plan was.

"I think that the reason why all those civilizations failed is simple: they lacked a raison d'etre. Hundreds of millions, billions of sapients living without purpose is a recipe for disaster. Capitalistic systems give sapients a powerful impetus to get off their asses and get stuff done."

"Right," Dean nodded.

"My plan was to simply have a ranking system, where people would be ranked based on personal power. It would bring prestige and influence, nothing more...substantial. People would still strive in the spirit of self-determination to move up through the rankings, while the two factions would handle the distribution of supplies and resources much like they still do now.

"Unfortunately, everyone thought my plan was 'destined for failure,'" she stated in a decrepit voice, raising her fingers into air quotes. "And they proposed to have PP instead of prestige. In the end, I agreed because, in the proposed system, PP are fairly innocuous. Just considering the amount you need to collect before they start having a noticeable impact...it's in the triple and quadruple digits."

So that's how it is, Dean thought. "So where does Bath come into this?" he asked; Lisa had only mentioned Lepochim, Nevis, and Olm.

"Oh, Nevis asked him for his opinion."

Dean inclined his head, fiddling aimlessly with the joysticks on the dash. "Well, sounds like he agreed with them."

"He thinks I'm too idealistic," Lisa sighed wistfully.

Virigard chose this moment to butt in. "But isn't that the point? Aren't you supposed to complement one another?"

Lisa clucked, cocking her head in contemplation. "Yeah, I guess." She had put a lot of Daoist Yin and Yang stuff on COTD's website. "He's pragmatic and vicious, while I'm, well," she gestured to herself with a hand, wiggling her toes.

"You're idealistic and empathetic," Dean finished.

Lisa pointed a finger. "Yeah. That's true, I suppose. About me, and about the both of us balancing each other out."

Suddenly, the flesh underneath them began to wither once more. From the Dash, Dean could see that this time, instead of just giving out below them, the flesh of the tortus was blackening all around them as well.

And as it blackened, pale, ashy worms poked through the black like hungry maggots.

"They're roots," Lisa breathed, craning her head over Dean's shoulders to see the screen.

"It's dragonleaf!" Virigard cheered. "Does this mean Bath's--" Virigard's breath cut out as the craft plummeted downward.